MACBETH
Now o'er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.
Macbeth's soliloquy draws out from its focus on the dagger to the broader night time, creating a nightmarish atmosphere of evil within which "wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep", a metaphor which contrasts the domestic sanctity of "curtain'd sleep" with the evil of our deepest fears. The "halfworld" can refer both to the time of day that Macbeth uses as a cover for his crimes and the moral boundaries that are being crossed. It creates a liminal space, where it is neither wholly one thing or the other, a space of unsettling ambiguity. Coupled with the mention of “Pale Hecate”, the three-headed deity oft associated with witchcraft, we see that this is where he first places his certainty, deciding his own actions in accordance to the supernatural and establishing the mindless and misplaced faith in prophecy and vision that defines Macbeth’s later character. One notable aspect of the goddess "Hecate" was that, above all else, she was the goddess of crossroads and choice. She was known for actively guiding mankind through darkness and forked paths. Macbeth’s mention of her name could be seen as a prayer for her blessing. Hecate, although not an Olympian god, was given power by Zeus, one of those being free passage into the underworld. Similarly, “halfworld” may be a transgression between worlds, from the seemingly dying world of “nature” (which goes against him, threatening to “prate” of his unnatural deeds), to an underworld or an afterlife, from where Macbeth’s otherworldly visions both assure and haunt him. He moves from the witches to a personified version of "wither'd murder" who is called into action by the howls of the watching wolves. Macbeth calls on a literary tradition of violence and greed, perhaps distancing his responsibility by suggesting he is playing a part which has been played many times before. Indeed, multiple parallels can be drawn with the history of the Tarquins, a classical history Shakespeare wrote about in the 1594 poem, The Rape of Lucrece. The first parallels are with Tarquin the Proud, the tyrannical final king of Rome. Like Macbeth, Tarquin's wife, Tullia Major, suggested her husband usurp the Roman throne (despite the king being her own father, a parallel brought to the fore in Lady Macbeth's justification of not killing Duncan directly because he “resembled my father as he slept”). Like Macbeth, Tarquin kills an aged king at his most vulnerable and in an underhand way. Though the parallels to the elder Tarquin are strong, Macbeth seems to reference here Tarquin's youngest son – Sextus Tarquinius – who crept into the house of his cousin only to threaten and rape his wife (who, subsequently, committed suicide). Like the younger Tarquin, Macbeth's act involves violation of a sleeping victim. The irony Macbeth seems not to see is that the rape of Lucretia became a turning point in Roman history, leading to a revolt against the Tarquins' regime. Macbeth’s regicidal intrusion can be seen here as a violation of both nature and Duncan’s life, the betrayal of a cousin, for the sake of self-indulged, hedonistic pleasure. Unlike facing the enemy head-on as a warrior, he instead chooses the cowardly method of cloak and dagger, forfeiting his status as a hero. Like the parallels drawn from history, this exploitation of trust kick-starts the chain of events that leads to a revolution and, like both Tarquins, Macbeth will inevitably die as a result of his crimes.
- Ken
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